Novels, Tales, Journeys

Your reprimands are totally unjust. It is not I but you who are behind the times—by a whole decade. Your speculative and serious reasoning belongs to 1818. At that time strict rules and political economy were fashionable. We attended balls without taking our swords off, it was improper for us to dance, and we had no time to be interested in the ladies. I have the honor of informing you that all that has now changed. The French quadrille has replaced Adam Smith;18 everyone chases skirts and amuses himself as he can. I follow the spirit of the times; but you are fixed, you are ci-devant, un homme stéréotype.^*9 What makes you sit alone, glued to the little bench of the opposition? I hope that Z. will set you on the right path: I entrust you to her Vatican coquetry. As for me, I’ve given myself completely to the patriarchal life: I go to bed at ten o’clock in the evening, ride out hunting over fresh snow with the local landowners, play Boston for kopecks with the old ladies and get angry when I lose. I see Liza every day—and fall more in love with her by the hour. There is much that is captivating in her. This quiet, noble harmony of behavior, the charm of Petersburg high society, and at the same time something alive, indulgent, of good old stock (as her grandmother says), nothing sharp or rigid in her judgments, she does not shrink from new impressions like a child from rhubarb. She listens and understands—a rare quality in our women. I have often been surprised at the dullness of wit or impurity of imagination in ladies who are otherwise quite amiable. They often take the most refined joke, the most poetic greeting, either as an insolent epigram or as an indecent platitude. In such cases, the cold air they assume is so devastatingly repulsive that the most ardent love cannot stand up to it.

I experienced that with Elena * * *, whom I loved to distraction. I said something tender to her; she took it as rudeness and complained of me to one of her lady friends. That totally disenchanted me. Besides Liza, I have Mashenka * * * for entertainment. She’s nice. These girls who grow up under the apple trees and amidst haystacks, educated by their nannies and nature, are far nicer than our monotonous beauties, who hold their mothers’ opinions before marriage, and their husbands’ after.

Good-bye, my friend. What’s new in society? Announce to everybody that I, too, have finally broken into poetry. The other day I composed an inscription for Princess Olga’s portrait (for which Liza chided me very sweetly):

Stupid as truth, boring as perfection.

Or maybe better:

Boring as truth, stupid as perfection.

They both have a resemblance to thought. Ask V. to come up with the first line and henceforth consider me a poet.

*1 ladies’ companions

*2 that is an event

*3 To affect a scorn of birth is ridiculous in a parvenu and baseness in a gentleman.

*4 idle foppishness

*5 Humble servant of them all.

*6 A man without fear or reproach, / Who is neither king, nor duke, nor count.

*7 former

*8 with the servant of the servants of God [i.e., the pope]

*9 a stereotypical man

At the Corner of a Little Square

CHAPTER ONE

Votre coeur est l’éponge imbibée de fiel et de vinaigre.

Correspondance inédite^*1

At the corner of a little square, in front of a small wooden house, stood a carriage—a rare occurrence in that remote part of the city. The driver lay asleep on the box, and the postillion was having a snowball fight with some servant boys.

In a room decorated with taste and luxury, on a sofa, dressed with great refinement, propped on pillows, lay a pale lady, no longer young, but still beautiful. Before the fireplace sat a young man of about twenty-six, leafing through the pages of an English novel.

The pale lady did not take from him her dark and sunken eyes, ringed with an unhealthy blue. Night was falling, the fire was dying down; the young man went on with his reading. Finally she said:

“What’s the matter with you, Valerian? You’re angry today.”

“Yes, I am,” he replied, without raising his eyes from the book.

“With whom?”

“With Prince Goretsky. He’s giving a ball tonight, and I’m not invited.”

“And do you want so much to be at his ball?”

“Not in the least. Devil take him and his ball. But if he invites the whole town, he ought to invite me as well.”

“Which Goretsky is it? Not Prince Yakov?”

“Not at all. Prince Yakov died long ago. It’s his brother, Prince Grigory, a notorious brute.”

“Who is he married to?”

“The daughter of that chorister…what’s his name?”

“I haven’t gone out for so long that I’ve quite lost touch with your high society. So you value very much the attention of Prince Grigory, the notorious scoundrel, and the good graces of his wife, a chorister’s daughter?”